And Adele, her clear brown eyes looking anxiously from her slender brown face, leaned toward Martie for inspection.  Martie was always reassuring.  Adele looked lovely; she had her hat on just right.

At Coney Teddy played bare-legged in the warm sand.  Adele had a beach chair near by.  She put on her glasses, and began her sewing; later they would all read parts of the paper, changing and exchanging constantly.  Martie and John, beaming upon all the world, joined the long lines that straggled into the bath-houses, got their bundled suits and their gray towels, and followed the attendant along the aisles that were echoing with the sound of human voices, and running with the water from wet bathing-suits.  Fifteen minutes later they met again, still beaming, to cross under the damp, icy shadow of the boardwalk, and come out, fairly dancing with high spirits, upon the long, hot curve of the beach.  The delicious touch of warm sand under her stockinged feet, the sunlight beating upon her glittering hair, Martie would run down the shore to the first wheeling shallows of the Atlantic.

“Nothing I have ever done in my life is so wonderful as this!” she shouted as the waves caught them, and carried them off their feet.  John swam well; Martie a little; neither could get enough of the tumbling blue water.

Breathless, they presently joined Adele; Martie spreading her glittering web of hair to dry, as she sat in the sand by the other woman’s chair; John stretched in the hot sand for a nap; Teddy staggering to and fro with a dripping pail.  They liked to keep a little away from the crowd; a hundred feet away the footmarked sand was littered with newspapers, cigarette-butts, gum-wrappers, and empty paper-bags, the drowsing men and women were packed so close that laughing girls and boys, going by in their bathing-suits, had to weave a curving path up and down the beach.

Presently they had a hearty meal:  soft-shell crabs fried brown, with lemon and parsley, coffee ready-mixed with milk and sugar, sliced tomatoes with raw onions, all served in cheap little bare rooms, at scarred little bare tables, a hundred feet from the sea.  Later came the amusements:  railways and flying-swings enjoyed simultaneously with hot sausages and ice-cream cones.

Adele liked none of this so much as she liked to go up toward the big hotels at about five o’clock, to find a table near the boardwalk, and sit twirling her parasol, and watching the people stream by.  The costumes and the types were tirelessly entertaining.  At six they ordered sandwiches and beer, and Teddy had milk and toast.  The uniformed band, coming out into its pagoda, burst into a brassy uproar, the sun sank, the tired crowd in its brilliant colours surged slowly to and fro.  Beyond all, the sea softly came and went, waves broke and spread and formed again unendingly.

Martie felt that she would like to sit so forever, with her son’s soft, relaxed little body in her arms.  To-night she did not analyze the new emotion that John’s glances, John’s voice, John’s quiet solicitude for her comfort, had lent the day.  Of course he liked her; of course he admired her; that was a fact long recognized with maternal amusement by Adele and herself.  Of course he laughed at her, but every one laughed at Martie when she chose to be humorous.  Let it go at that!